"Hello, Suckers!"
Texas Guinan was born on this day in 1884. If you’ve never heard of her—or even guessed that Texas was a “her”—few would expect you to. It was only while I was researching jazz-era New York for a novel, that she came onto my radar. And she’s held my fascination ever since.
Smiling for the cameras—even as she’s being arrested (in 1928)
Born Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan to Irish immigrants in Waco, TX, she grew up on a horse and cattle ranch and attended the Loretta Convent’s parochial school before securing a two-year scholarship at the American Conservatory of Music (funded by Chicago businessman, Marshall Field). Armed with a respectable soprano voice, basic cowboy skills, and a sure shot honed at a local shooting gallery, Guinan joined a touring “Wild West” show—and rode off into a fantastical future.
Arriving in New York City in 1905, she adopted the stage name “Texas Guinan” to stand out from the sea of chorus girls, and eventually found stardom as the female lead in the play, Simple Simon Simple (in which she accidentally shot herself with a loaded gun). Parlaying her success onto Hollywood’s soundstages, Guinan was billed as “the female Bill Hart” (the era’s biggest western star) at the start of her film career (1917); and “Queen of the Night Clubs” at its end. But it was her role as the Grande Dame of Prohibition-era nightlife that remains her most lasting.
Guinan’s first sound picture was released four years before her death in 1933 (at age 49)
“A film as phoney as the life it portrays,” said one critic
Starting out as a singer at the Beaux Arts Club in 1923, Guinan’s banter drew in customers, and she was hired away by The El Fay Club (where she received 50% of the profits). This was followed by her own Texas Guinan Club at 117 West 48th Street; and the famed 300 Club (where the London Hotel now stands; and a mere 100 yards from my old apartment on Seventh Avenue at 54th Street).
Guinan followed in the tradition of the “New York Hostess.” One in a long line of compelling female personalities holding sway over the city’s saloons and salons that included high society’s Elsa Maxwell; downtown icon, Susanne Bartsch; and Elaine Kaufman (of the famed Yorkville watering hole, Elaine’s). While one reviewer called Guinan’s film, Queen of the Night Clubs (1929), “As phoney [sic] as the life it portrays,” it’s that blatantly manufactured history that makes Guinan stand out in a city forever associated with reinvention.
Arrested and indicted with other speakeasy operators in June 1928, Guinan beat the rap, continuing to hold court over a dwindling party. She seemed unwilling to admit that—with a Depression looming—the party was, indeed, over.
The New Yorker’s review of that same film said Guinan lacked her famed charm and vitality, and that the camera was “not kind to her looks.” Certainly, the years had left their mark on her face (if not her liver). Yet that refusal to “call it a night,” is part of her appeal. And adds a touching and authentic end to the brassy, bald-faced lie that was her life.
She was a Catholic girl who grew up to befriend rumrunners and gangsters. A stage and screen star who hung a map of Texas in lieu of a nameplate on her dressing room door. A gossip-column mainstay who claimed (falsely) that her father "was the first white child seen in Waco"; and that she’d been awarded the bronze medal while entertaining the troops in France. A hostess who welcomed all patrons with a rum-and-soprano-tinged, “Hello, suckers!”
And I love her for it.